JUST BECAUSE A GAME IS IN THIS LIST DOES NOT MEAN IT IS WORKING 100% CORRECTLY IN MAME.LOTS OF GREAT GAMES ARE PERFECTLY PLAYABLE, BUT HAVE SMALL SOUND OR GRAPHICS ISSUES CAUSING THEM TO BE LISTED AS NOT PERFECTLY EMULATED IN MAME.DO NOT USE A NO-NAG VERSION OF MAME AND THEN COMPLAIN TO MAME DEVS AFTER YOU'VE REMOVED THE GIANT RED BOX THEY PUT THERE TO INFORM YOU THAT THERE IS AN ISSUE WITH THE GAME. IF YOU FEEL THE NEED TO ASK ABOUT AN ISSUE, ALWAYS TEST WITH THE UNADULTERATED OFFICIAL MAME BUILD FIRST.

For the next (and hopefully next to last) installment of the All Killer, No Filler gamelists......PLATFORMERS

This one might need more games added than deleted. When I put the original list together for my cab I was thinking more along the lines of run and jump console style games.I've added the adventure platformers that were bumped out of Hack N Slash.

I currently have them in classics. They could be in both.I guess PacLand would go here too. (I currently have it in classics, but it probably belongs here instead)It's open for discussion.

As an example, I ended up not putting Guantlet anywhere and will put it in classics.IMO, it is more run and gun than anything and is very similar to some of the top down maze run and gun games in the list.The list doesn't have to be perfect or authoritative.

The shmup list and Vs fighting lists have their other uses, but my end goal with these lists is to end up with a smaller romset of games worth having.Maybe they'll actually get played if they aren't buried in thousands of other roms.As long as a game doesn't get left out of the final overall list, I'm not all that hung up on it being classified perfectly.

I thought the task would be easier if broken down into chunks such as genre, where fans of particular genres could weigh in.

I currently have them in classics. They could be in both.I guess PacLand would go here too. (I currently have it in classics, but it probably belongs here instead)It's open for discussion.

As an example, I ended up not putting Guantlet anywhere and will put it in classics.IMO, it is more run and gun than anything and is very similar to some of the top down maze run and gun games in the list.The list doesn't have to be perfect or authoritative.

The shmup list and Vs fighting lists have their other uses, but my end goal with these lists is to end up with a smaller romset of games worth having.Maybe they'll actually get played if they aren't buried in thousands of other roms.As long as a game doesn't get left out of the final overall list, I'm not all that hung up on it being classified perfectly.

Right on. Makes sense. Thanks for all your effort putting this together.

Did we decide this is where Ghosts 'N Goblins and Ghouls 'N Ghosts belong?

Yep. I moved some similar games from hack and slash to here.

I have a fuzzy classification system in my head now:If the character is locked in a 2D environment, jumps between levels, and throws projectiles it is a platformer.I think there was one game where the above things were met, but the character only ever used a sword so I kept it in hack and slash.I'm still debating Altered Beast. The mechanics are still pretty beat 'em up.

Again, I don't want to get too bogged down in obsessing over classifications.If we got real serious about that, we'd end up with 20 categories. Some would only have a few games in them.

Sometime this weekend, I'll scroll through the video previews of the classics list on my cab and see if there is anything else that should be moved here.If it's fairly early 80's and somewhat popular, I'll probably just leave it in classics though.

ALADDIN is a silly bootleg hack of the Megadrive game, it isn't worth playing, it's massively unbalanced and buggy.

likewise I personally wouldn't bother with the Megatech or Playchoice 10 stuff for these lists, if you want an arcade list they're not 'real' arcade games, half your screen space is taken by a menu, and without it you're just playing a rom that's identical to the console version of the game (and at that point you might as well just use the console version, and at that point, you might as well start adding console games to your list) Keith Courage likewise is just the PCE rom with a silly external timer slapped on, it's more annoying than useful.

The list is odd anyway.

You have Joe and Mac returns, but really I'd consider that part of the Tumble Pop / Diet Go Go / Joe and Mac Returns trilogy (all different themes, and different play styles, but clearly related games) Tumble Pop is the most well known of them, Diet Go Go is the most interesting to play, Joe and Mac Returns is the best looking.

(yes I know Joe and Mac returns is also the sequel to Caveman Ninja aka Joe and Mac, but the game style makes it closer to the final entry in the other trilogy)

It amazes me how they managed to make much larger sprites look and play so very much worse than Rastan did. Rastan was really nicely drawn and animated and felt fluid, Nastar's poorly drawn one-frame animations are downright embarassing. Better technology, and yet, it's just so bad. (Warrior Blade is actually a worthy successor I think, but, not for this category, it's a fight-and-move-right.)

If you are calling this "no filler"... is there anybody here that would defend Nastar as being something other than filler?

Pang/Super Pang/Buster Brothers as additions perhaps? If I had to choose only one of these, it would be Super Pang.

DigDug? (could also be classics)Flicky?

I'd second Harveybridman's suggestions of Kid Niki and Mappy.

Added Super Pang. Other games mentioned will go in classics.

I'm considering changing the name of this category to ADVENTURE PLATFORM and ditching anything that has a static playfield that doesn't move with the character.That's just based on my personal preference. When I'm in the mood for something like Black Tiger or Ghosts N Goblins, I'm not really looking for Snow Bros type games.Thoughts?

EDIT: After going back through the list getting the rom names, I'm not as concerned with the single screen platformers.I'll probably trim the snow bros series down, might not keep all the others, but they don't feel out of place.

Played the following games for a very short time and suspect them of sucking:

CHINA GATEPIG OUTROD LAND

What say you?

I'd like to weed out some of the non-scrolling (static single screen) platformers.Do we need all 3 Bubble Bobbles?The original to CLASSICS?Same question for the 3 Snow Brothers games?

Super Pang probably should have gone in puzzles.Should I amend the puzzle list or leave it here?

If Double Dragon can make it onto the lists then so can China Gate, same developer, similar hardware, similar style, it's just the Technos twist on this kind of game (and was a popular request for a long time until it was emulated)

Rod Land is quite a famous title, although many regard some of the ports as having better gameplay than the arcade. Still, it is a game people remember fondly and not really one you can drop from the lists.

Pig Out like many US developed games has atrocious production values, and frankly isn't something I'd heard of before MAME, maybe it has it's fans, I'm not sure.

Another interesting metric is that both China Gate and Rod Land were both quite heavily bootlegged, Pig Out was not. While not a direct indicator of a *good* game it is a decent indicator of which games were popular / had high enough levels of demand to be attractive to bootleggers.

Snow Bros 3. is just a hack of Snow Bros 1, although it does have new levels etc. but probably isn't justified here.

I'm surprised you 'meh' Kicker, it's actually a classic game, and one of the most popular ones I see being played on those xx-in-1 bootleg PCBs.

Likewise, I absolutely love Saboten Bombers and you've put a 'meh' next to that too..

KEITH COURAGE IN ALPHA ZONES still needs to go away, it's not a real arcade game at all.

I'm going to go back and add Super Pang to the puzzle list when the server starts behaving correctly.I'll probably shave the one CHD game off that list too.While it was just different enough to make it onto the list, I think most people aren't going to like it.

these 2 have been demoted to NOT WORKING in MAME for a while because we decided they've never worked properly, they don't always coin up / start correctly, meaning the games often end up in unknown states of playing the game while still asking you to 'press start' resulting in them crashing when you run out of lives. I'm not sure you really want broken games on these lists.. STREETS OF RAGE II in the beat 'em up list is in the same boat (also a MegaPlay game)

I'm posting here on this old thread because I had some idiot using a no-nag build moaned at me that they weren't working when they tried playing them while claiming they got the list of games they were using from a 'best games in MAME list' (ie this one) Apparently they felt justified in using said 'no nag' MAME because they were only running games somebody else had already deemed to be the 'best in MAME' and therefore must already be perfectly emulated meaning there was no need for the warnings...

Since they don't actually work correctly, and idiots will apparently continue to use builds with the warnings ripped out you might want to consider removing them from these lists.

these 2 have been demoted to NOT WORKING in MAME for a while because we decided they've never worked properly, they don't always coin up / start correctly, meaning the games often end up in unknown states of playing the game while still asking you to 'press start' resulting in them crashing when you run out of lives. I'm not sure you really want broken games on these lists.. STREETS OF RAGE II in the beat 'em up list is in the same boat (also a MegaPlay game)

I'm posting here on this old thread because I had some idiot using a no-nag build moaned at me that they weren't working when they tried playing them while claiming they got the list of games they were using from a 'best games in MAME list' (ie this one) Apparently they felt justified in using said 'no nag' MAME because they were only running games somebody else had already deemed to be the 'best in MAME' and therefore must already be perfectly emulated meaning there was no need for the warnings...

Since they don't actually work correctly, and idiots will apparently continue to use builds with the warnings ripped out you might want to consider removing them from these lists.

I understand your frustration with people. I added a big red disclaimer to all the threads, but I don't know if people will pay any more attention to it than the nag boxes.The lists have made it into an option on a couple front ends, so it's out there beyond my control at this point.

I am leaving the games in the lists. Partially because I like them and partially because I have no intention of maintaining or updating the lists (as stated from the start). I am just not that into the emulation projects anymore and don't want to be forever chained to maintaining something just because I thought it would be cool to make and share it once upon a time. Good thing I'm not a software developer.